Gas Boiler Fittings Outnumbered Heat Pumps By 15 To One in UK Last Year - Report (theguardian.com) 128
An anonymous reader shares a report: Gas boiler fittings outnumbered new heat pump installations by more than 15 to one last year, and only one in eight new homes were equipped with the low-carbon alternative despite the government's clean energy targets.
Poorer households are also being shut out of the heat pump market as the grants available are inadequate and should be increased, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation thinktank. The UK has the slowest introduction of heat pumps in Europe: fewer than 100,000 were fitted last year, compared with 1.5m gas boilers. Most of the boilers were replacements for existing units, but new houses are still being built with gas as standard -- only 13% of new homes came with heat pumps last year.
If the government is to meet its net zero targets, switching people to heat pumps will be essential: about 450,000 households will need to install them each year by 2030. But the grant available through the boiler upgrade scheme -- $9,700 in England and Wales -- still leaves homeowners paying about $7000 on average.
Poorer households are also being shut out of the heat pump market as the grants available are inadequate and should be increased, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation thinktank. The UK has the slowest introduction of heat pumps in Europe: fewer than 100,000 were fitted last year, compared with 1.5m gas boilers. Most of the boilers were replacements for existing units, but new houses are still being built with gas as standard -- only 13% of new homes came with heat pumps last year.
If the government is to meet its net zero targets, switching people to heat pumps will be essential: about 450,000 households will need to install them each year by 2030. But the grant available through the boiler upgrade scheme -- $9,700 in England and Wales -- still leaves homeowners paying about $7000 on average.
Green? (Score:3, Funny)
Air Conditioning+Cheaper (Score:3)
Everyone's moved on from the whole green eco-friendly thing.
Forget the environmental concerns, heat pumps are great in the UK for two other reasons: they are cheaper to operate thanks to the maritime climate that does not vary too much outside the range 0-25C throughout the year (yes it does go outside that range but usually not for that long). Heat pumps can also provide cooling in the summer months which is uncommon to have in UK homes but, with rising temperatures, increasingly nice to have, though perhaps less so up in the North.
If I were still living in the
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Except apparently they're NOT cheaper to operate:
From TFA (in the lefty Guardian)
At current energy prices, households would on average suffer a £32 bill increase by making the switch, the report found.
(i _think_ that's 32GBP/year , not sure ).
Although they say this is due to "distortions" in the energy market due to how taxes are imposed etc. ( the article they link is here: https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com] )
And that's after hugely higher installation costs even after subsidies. (13.5k GBP total with 7.5k subsidy for heat pump vs 2k gbp for boiler ?!)
I'm sure the installers are all after those juicy government subsid
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Here is a table of monitored heat pumps showing you how a properly configured heat pump should be [heatpumpmonitor.org]
The UK is suffering from not enough training on the configuration side of things for plumbers installing heat pumps
Re: Air Conditioning+Cheaper (Score:2)
Just curious: do they heat water fast enough for taps, showers and baths? I donâ(TM)t have room in my flat for a hot water tank either. Would I have to replace my combi boiler with both a heat pump for central heating and another gas boiler for hot running water?
Re: Air Conditioning+Cheaper (Score:4, Informative)
There is no heat pump that produces hot water on demand, they all have an internal tank holding hot water for use when needed and are usually an 1to1 replacement for combi boilers but it is dependent on how you heat your property, ie with water radiators or ducting.
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I have central heating with water filled radiators, but I don't think that's the issue here. Like I said, I don't have space for a tank big enough for our family to supply the on-demand hot water. There are a lot of people like this in the UK, so why would we switch from gas to electric?
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Sadly here in Canada the economics is much worse for them. Instead of just a heat pump you have to have a heat pump plus furnace because, while they are still (slightly) more efficient at -40C their heating power drops off markedly at such low temperatures and they are not powerful enough to heat a house.
Note that's air sourced heat pumps. Ground sourced or water-sourced don't have that issue.
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No, it's not "lots". I had GSHP spec'ed out for my single family home in a northern climate. It would require either 1) trenching my entire back yard (about 1/8 acre), or 2) two wells about 400 ft deep (plus some trenching from the well heads into the basement). Both priced out to >$50k for the earth works, then more for the heat pump equipment itself. I did rough calculations that demonstrated that, over the next 25 years or so, it would have cost about 1/3 less to do GSHP
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Most vertical ground source heat pumps need boreholes 60-200m deep [heatpumphouse.com] which is deep enough to
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However, a 3-4m hole is way too shallow since while it will probably remain above freezing that deep it will still be cold and the pipe will cool it further. You have to remember that you need to be extracting heat from a large volume of material otherwise shortly after you turn on it will get as cold as the outside.
The problem with a 3-4 meter hole is not as you describe it there, although you cover it pretty well in the rest of the post. The temperature at that depth is quite stable and only increases very, very slightly as you go deeper due to geothermal heating. The problem is, as you point out in the rest of the post, that there is not enough volume around the pipe to deliver sufficient heat if you have a vertical heat well only 3-4 meters deep. Horizontal piping at 3-4 meters will work just fine, you just have to
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Everyone's moved on from the whole green eco-friendly thing.
No just the American president did. The rest of the world is still very much focused on it.
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Everyone's moved on from the whole green eco-friendly thing.
No just the American president did. The rest of the world is still very much focused on it.
Our government here in Canada just ditched our carbon tax. There is an election coming up and they recognized how unpopular it was. Better late than never.
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You're an ignorant asshole, not looking at the science, just what your "dear leader" tells you.
The reason, if you'd even skimmed the post, is that they're more expensive to buy and install.
Re:Green? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you've never been told oil will run out in 7 years. In the past 100 years not once have our proven reserves run that low. You've been told we'll reach "peak oil" in 7 years. That is peak demand, and peak production, not end of consumption. And there's a very good chance that may have already happened with oil consumption and production being flatish the past few years.
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Yes, you are irrelevant. On the other hand 100s of millions of people collectively in the world
Are exactly the same as you.
Re: Green? (Score:2)
When is the think-tank giving out grants also? (Score:2)
The article has the usual playbook
- Nonprofit, think tank, university, or other talk only entity calls for more "government investment" or "government subsidies"
- Nonprofit, think tank, university or other talk only entity does not include in the article or research report a direct statement of how much of its annual budget it is giving away in direct grants to consumers, homeowners, citizens for this effort
The first question to ask these talk only agencies is, "How much of your current year's budget are yo
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Yes, you are irrelevant. On the other hand 100s of millions of people collectively in the world are not. Mind you that's 100s of millions of people more intelligent than you, i.e. people who seem to understand what happens when you multiply small numbers together.
Says an American living in the country that has the highest emissions per capita without any hint of irony. Still using your 4 ton 5 litre truck to go to the end of the street to buy a loaf of bread?
USD17k, for just a heat pump? (Score:2)
How big are these things? Including installation costs, they shouldn't even cost 1/4 that price.
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Re: USD17k, for just a heat pump? (Score:3)
There are many residential great pump units that can operate well down to deep subzero f temperatures. Backup electric resistance heat for truly extreme events is very cheap.
I've designed many all electric whole house heat pump systems in Maine. It's not necessarily a big upcharge in New construction. It can be harder in retrofit if existing ducting is not adequate, and air to water for hydronic systems is currently still a more significant upcharge.
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There are many residential great pump units that can operate well down to deep subzero f temperatures. Backup electric resistance heat for truly extreme events is very cheap.
I've designed many all electric whole house heat pump systems in Maine. It's not necessarily a big upcharge in New construction. It can be harder in retrofit if existing ducting is not adequate, and air to water for hydronic systems is currently still a more significant upcharge.
Maine is a very unique case in the US. Electricity costs are high, but other fuels are also expensive because heating fuels are generally delivered to each residence by truck, not pipeline. In huge areas of the US, natural gas is stupidly cheap. In my city, even the most efficient heat pumps would be 2x the operating cost of a natural gas furnace. The article is specifically about the UK, electricity in the UK costs 2-3 times more than the US average. They've also had recent supply shocks for both natu
Re:USD17k, for just a heat pump? (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially since you mention Chicago, you've got to watch this dude's pitch at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (@TechnologyConnections) on YT. He lives in Chicago in a newish town house and he goes into an analysis how his heat pump system is fine.
Of note newer low temp rated heat pumps maintain their rated output to 5 deg F and keep producing heat (at reduced COP) down to -15F / -25C.
Also he goes into how many hours a year it's been colder than 5F in Chicago... during which one can still use the backup "heat strips" (resistive elements), or, as he puts it maybe get some space heaters.
Anyway, the point is that the tech is already here such that air source heat pumps are competitive in Chicago climate and probably cost effective (but that depends on retail gas electricity charges which can really vary)
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But that heat pump system gives you air conditioning as well.
A smarter approach would generally be to add a heat pump ductless mini split in a living room or space with high heating load and keep the gas furnace for really cold days, just using the fan to circulate air.
All that said, current costs are too high, and that is a problem if you want to increase adoption. It is a shame that new houses are built with gas, but it take a lot more information to understand why. In the US, there is a significant sup
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Besides the pipes for the coolant (you need to drill a borehole or lay pipes horizontally underground), there's a bit of electrical work to wire it into the breaker panel, and
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These are supposed to be air source, not ground source. No holes dug or bored here.
The way UK winters and summers are going, we should all be fitting real AC units instead.
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Typically, they're about the size of the A/C that would be required for a given property with both the internal and external units having a similar size to their A/C equivalents. Small "whitebox" style appliance size for the single-home domestic versions, multiple larger units for big commercial or apartment building installations.
There really shouldn't be an "AC equivalent" - an air conditioner IS a heat pump. You run it in one direction and you get hot air inside - you reverse it and you get cool air inside.
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And that difference in price is total crap in the sense that for any newly designed unit it's an incremental cost to the manufacturer to add the reversing capability.
Yes, you'd also need some extra smarts to deal with it icing in cold weather, but that's also nowadays pretty darned accessible, certainly not thousands of dollars worth of extra cost.
a still credible description/rant from "Technology Connections" on the topic https://youtu.be/43XKfuptnik?t... [youtu.be]
Re:USD17k, for just a heat pump? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I were to install a heat pump at home it'd be pretty major.
1) I'd need to install more radiators (I'm in the US, but I saw a low of radiators without forced air in Europe too) as best pumps cool the water more
2) I'd need to wire 220 to my boiler area for the heat pump (I may need to do something for circulator pump too, I'm not sure, my current system is gravity feed)
3) I'd need to get some type of fancy system that controls my car charging vs heating since my service isn't really enough amps to reliably do both at once, and I don't believe there's more available from the pole.
Between an electrician for the electrical and a plumber for the plumbing we're getting pretty high before the system itself.
Alternately I could go with 3 split units.
My hope is to slowly switch over to split units and spread the cost while hoping my boiler from the 50s survives (I assume it will, since it's all cast iron parts and nothing moves).
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I have gravity feed ducts where the previous owner replaced the oil furnace with a more recent central air system not made to work with those ducts.
The second floor gets miserable as the furnace can't really pump air up there.
Instead of $40k to replace all the duct work in the walls, I went with a multi-zone mini-split system initially for $12k total with install.
I say initially as I started with 3 head units and 1 radiator. Just for upstairs.
Later I expanded this to 6 total head units and 2 radiators in o
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$12k isn't bad. I'd want a similar system, I've been quoted $15-20k
I have zero ducts, it's gravity fed radiators. They work, except I can't really let the house cool (it takes about 6 hours to hear from 65 to 69 on a cold day).
My plan is to do my downstairs with 1 mini split (it's a single large room, and a poorly insulated addition that's tiny, I'd control that with venting I think), and the upstairs with 1 that has 3 vents (for the bedrooms) and some type of venting system to exchange with the bathroom.
$1
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They work, except I can't really let the house cool (it takes about 6 hours to hear from 65 to 69 on a cold day).
A smart thermostat should be able to work out when to start warming to get you to 69 at your scheduled wake-up time,. based on forecasted outdoor temps and what it learns about the characteristics of your house. It'll mean that you probably only turn the heat off for a few hours a day, maybe starting a couple of hours before bedtime until, say, midnight, but it might still be worth doing.
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I manually set it a degree or two cooler to sleep and let it decide on the warming time for the morning.
I found that even with pretty big swings it doesn't make a financial difference, but the house is definitely warmer when it's 68 degrees and warming up vs 68 degrees and cooling down (I assume because the radiators are place at the cold spots, so when they're hot there aren't cold spots), but it's a comfort thing and not a savings thing.
The Hester runs pretty much 24/7 to maintain temperature anyway (not
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I would suggest checking out mini-split heat pumps. You can get the best of both worlds without having to duct your whole house. I will be needing a new system in the next 5 years and was pleased to see mini-split heat pumps are available and work very efficiently. This is on the word of the people I've talked to for quotes as I'm not an HVAC tech but was curious about what options are out there.
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How big are these things? Including installation costs, they shouldn't even cost 1/4 that price.
Why not? How much do you think a central building climate control system should cost? I'm genuinely curious what number you come up with given how I've just spent $10k on something that was *cheaper* than a comparable heatpump.
8 times the cost (Score:4, Informative)
in UK heat pumps are 8 times boiler cost to install, 12.5K vs 1.6K pounds. no wonder most working people and poor people can't afford them!
in other news the UK using either one will have no measurable effect on carbon emissions
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Do most houses in the UK support using heat pumps for cooling ? One of the big factors in my choice of a heat pump was that I got A/C cooling as well as heating.
Sounds like this is mostly for hot water
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We mostly have hot water radiators, so yes, hot water, but for heating as well as bathing.
I think the current plans assume just changing out the existing gas or oil boiler for one of these things, leaving the existing pipework in place.
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Anything built after WW2 seems to have ducting in the US.
In my region though (Philadelphia area) there are a lot of older places that have radiators and often haven't been updated with ducts.
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Yeah think a lot of the northeast is like that with a lot of homes built 80-100 years ago. Parents house is the same, no ducts, just radiators and window units for where we wanted AC. Unless you are gutting the whole place hard to argue against just using mini-splits for those situations.
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Do most houses in the UK support using heat pumps for cooling ?
I'd be surprised if they did. Air conditioning isn't much of a thing in northern Europe, the climate is mild enough that it isn't generally necessary.
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in UK heat pumps are 8 times boiler cost to install, 12.5K vs 1.6K pounds. no wonder most working people and poor people can't afford them!
in other news the UK using either one will have no measurable effect on carbon emissions
Two things:
1. You seem to be ignoring the fact that there are subsidies for installing ASHP
2. You are also ignoring the fact that the UK is made up of four countries, and that the subsidies vary from country to country.
I live in a late Victorian house. When we moved in, there was no insulation. Couple this with the house being single glazed, and heating provided by 1970's storage heaters [wikipedia.org], and the house cost a fortune to keep warm. (I should also add that the majority of the lighting was still incandescent b
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Not quite. Octopus pricing starts from about 4.5k, but there might be other things that need doing like enlarging rads.
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"Poorer households are also being shut out of the heat pump market as the grants available are inadequate and should be increased, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation thinktank."
They mean to say that it's mostly the people who still have some remaining cash that get scammed into buying an overpriced reverse airconditioning system. Wait till they find out what maintenance is required in 10 years.
The neighbours being disappointing again (Score:5, Insightful)
I installed a heat pump back in 2021. It's fantastic in an Irish or British climate. Home's much warmer and much quieter. Don't need to have CO monitors in my house, don't need to remember to schedule oil deliveries, and so many more things. I can stand outside my back door and not get assaulted by fumes.
All the energy I use at this point is electric - heating, cooking, transportation, all of it. And I offset 33% of the electricity I use via solar PV. When I need to replace my roof, I'll put panels on my house and double my solar production.
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You were obviously not on a gas main. Oil heating is very expensive.
Electricity sounds fine until you realise the cost per kW is four times the rate for natural gas. That's why nobody wants to switch.
Re:The neighbours being disappointing again (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using it for five years now. I'm aware how much electricity costs. But for me, it's discounted by 33% due to solar PV. And my heat pump is 150-300% efficient.
When it makes sense to replace the roof on my house I can double my solar capacity and I'll increase my electricity storage capacity.
So long term it will cost me way less. And, as I noted, the benefits go beyond cost. It's quieter, it's not spewing fumes outside my house, my home has less fire risk, etc.
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Long term we are all dead.
It might cost less long term, but only if you're going to be in that house long term - 7+ years according to my calculations when I was contemplating such a system.
You'll never get the money back when you sell.
The other concern I have had for rooftop PV is hail storms, which we get a lot of in the US midwest. Nobody will insure the damn things because of it.
Finally, when the roof needs to be torn off and replaced, moving solar panels adds a massive expense to the job.
The siren so
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There is now a UL standard for PV panels in regards to hail, to receive it the panels need to resist hail of 3 inches at 88.3MPH (Marty!), I wonder if insurance would change their tune if the panels met that spec.
https://www.solarreviews.com/b... [solarreviews.com]
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I don't plan to move. My roof is cement slate; it will last around 50 years.
In less than four years I've generated over half the money I put into it.
Re: The neighbours being disappointing again (Score:2)
the cost per kW is four times the rate for natural gas.
Same difference on this side of the pond. Given the COP of a modern heat pump, that makes heating costs about break even. So the payback period for the increased equipment cost is infinite.
And then our "energy" company sells both electricity and natural gas. But they earn a lot more profit on the electricity. Which they produce by ... burning the natural gas I didn't use. They have exploited all the hydroelectric resources in the area (and are getting tossed off of some river systems by local tribes), do e
Re: The neighbours being disappointing again (Score:2)
You can't compare electric unit price to gas unit price directly. If you look at your bill, you'll notice that your supplier multiplies the rate by a number of constants in order to convert your cubic units to kWh units, and then they also correct for pipe pressure and other delivery network conditions.
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Re:The neighbours being disappointing again (Score:5, Informative)
Another advantage of heat pumps is that you run them all the time, not only when you want heat, so your house stays at a nice consistent temperature.
There are big issues with them in the UK though, mostly down to how crap our houses are. You need decent insulation which can usually but not always be retrofitted. You also need good size radiators or under-floor heating, which are somewhat rare here. A lot of shit houses have been built with the tiniest, cheapest radiators possible, and no space to fit bigger ones because ours are some of the smallest houses in Europe. They also need a water tank, and a lot of properties don't have much room for one.
It's getting to be less of an issue now because heat pumps can reach 60C or more, similar to what people run gas boilers at, but of course you get less efficiency when you need such high temperatures.
The really criminal part is that we are still building rubbish houses with gas, and if you are lucky a token solar panel on the roof. The builders can't be trusted. For example we mandated that EV charging is available, but some have been installing commercial charging posts that cost you upwards of 50p/kWh, compared to 7p/kWh if it's wired into your electricity meter.
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Another advantage of heat pumps is that you run them all the time, not only when you want heat, so your house stays at a nice consistent temperature.
Why we are fucked in a nutshell: People seem to think that improvements in efficiency give them a free pass to waste energy. Way to go undoing any benefit you achieved, all in favour of your comfort (seriously get a smart heating system, there's no reason to run intermittently and not be comfortable too).
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That's just how heat pumps work. They produce heat slower than gas boilers do, so you leave them running and let the thermostat do its job.
Maybe it's different where you are, but most people here have their gas boiler on a time schedule so it comes on before they get up and before they get home from work. That doesn't work very well with a heat pump.
Having it on all the time also lets you take advantage of cheap energy, which in the UK is always renewable. You can increase the temperature by an extra degree
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don't need to remember to schedule oil deliveries
You came from a very different place a lot of other people do. I'm also guessing you revamped your entire heating system with a general house improvement too right? What's your insulation class?
We just installed a gas boiler here. In a terraced house it actually isn't easy to specify a heatpump that doesn't leave an ugly box taking up a chunk of what already is a very small garden. Additionally with the lack of insulation in the walls, floors, and crappy double glass in the house there were very real questi
Lack of experience + overeager salesfolks? (Score:2)
A heat pump isn't more than â1500-â2000 for a good air-to-air one here in Norway.
I suspect people are being 'oversold'. That they think they need a full HVAC system, while they only need it in the main room - and the heat will seep through the rest of the house easily enough. Unless they have an asbolutely huge home. Then maybe they'll need two of them.
Installing vast amounts of ducting etc. is entirely unnecessary.
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solar panels first (Score:3)
We need solutions that work in the UK. (Score:5, Interesting)
The weather here in the UK is unpredictable. One moment it's sunny, the other it's freezing. Meanwhile, heat pumps are terrible at spike demands. A friend of mine who installed heat pumps says he's regretting it big time because it would take 3 hours to increase the temperature in his house by 2 degrees when the weather turned. Perhaps pumps work in places that are more steady weather-wise but definitely not here in the UK.
Insulation is another thing. Heat pumps are good at maintaining temperature but to do that they need good insulation. Most British homes l, on the other hand, are very poorly insulated and heat pumps in those properties are a lost cause.
We need solutions that are adequate, fit for purpose and work for people who live here. Not just for the California millionaires who invented them and who need to heat their houses a handful of times oer year.
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Re:We need solutions that work in the UK. (Score:4, Informative)
My home is made with cement blocks - just like most houses in the UK. It's a massive thermal mass.
I installed heat recovery ventilation which also helps hold heat in while maintaining a constant supply of fresh air.
Which means that temperature swings outside don't really affect me.
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I live in Michigan; it will be 34 tomorrow morning, and 68 tomorrow afternoon.
Our Daikin cold climate heat pump has no trouble keeping up, or maintaining temperature, even at sub-zero temperatures.
You are correct, they can not handle rapid heating demands, but I have just adjusted the programmable thermostat to account for longer heating times, so by the time I wake up, my house is nice and warm.
More important than the heat pump though, is that we had our exterior walls and attic space re-insulated, and tha
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Heatpumps don't need good isolation, they need low dT heat transfer to room air for efficiency.
Tons of poorly isolated old commercial buildings use air to air heatpumps now. Just throwing a bunch of single split airconditioners on a building is cheap as chips, does AC in summer and it will heat up the place fast. Looks like ass with all the external units, but who cares.
In a home, floor heating is the more luxurious way to do low dT heating ... but air to air system work fine there too.
Re: We need solutions that work in the UK. (Score:3)
Sorry but that is an objection that comes from misuse of the equipment. Whether outside is 0C or 20, you pick a target temperature and let the thermostat do its thing. You don't allow the house to get to 15C and then complain it took too long to go to 22C.
Re: We need solutions that work in the UK. (Score:2)
Do you ever open your windows to just let some fresh air in? It's a valid use case. Wake up in the morning, air our all the humidity, heat up.
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Complaining about gas mileage while professing a love of flooring it is a bold strategy Cotton.
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One moment it's sunny,
Isn't the British term for that called "summer"? I hear it is the best day of the year for some people.
Re: We need solutions that work in the UK. (Score:2)
Unless you live in Manchester and you see topless chavs in shorts in March with the first steak of sunshine. ðY
I recently replaced (Score:2)
...my gas furnace. I live in Northern California.
I asked the salesman about heat pumps. He said they were not recommended in our area.
Price was not a consideration, I would have paid extra for a heat pump.
I got a gas furnace.
I find it odd that people who live in colder climates are posting here that heat pumps work for them.
Maybe the cold weather ones are not available in the US?
Maybe the salesman had a lot of dissatisfied heat pump customers?
I'm confused
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Gotta do your own research unfortunately, can't trust contractors and installers you don't know any more than a car dealer or mechanic, the trades can be resistant to change. If price wasn't an issue then chances are Mitsubishi makes a unit that would work, they have models that operate 100% at 5F and still work down to -22F
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If you go to a Ford dealer, the salesman isn't going to recommend a Porsche. If you go to Taco Bell, they're not going to recommend Wendy's.
Lots of folks have experience installing gas furnaces. That's what they know. They don't know heat pumps. They could learn, but learning is hard. If they can keep selling gas furnaces, that's easier.
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Why the hell wouldnt they want to sell you more expensive heat pumps?
There is a difference between price and profit. If they get more profit per unit on a model, they are going to push that model even if another has a higher price.
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Supply shortage of heat pumps. I know Carrier specifically had a lot of challenges meeting demand the past two years at least on the residential side.
Depends on What You Want (Score:3)
For background purposes, my climate varies from 100F down to a rare but occasional 34F. I've owned many electric heat pumps(8 or 9) over the last 35 years. I currently own three, two central and one mini-split. Multiple units in different homes. Multiple brands. Multiple HVAC engineers and installers. The current set of pumps vary in age from as old as 8 to as new as 1 years. SEER from 14 to 20.
All of my heatpump units have been fine for cooling even on the average(98F) days. But, they have all been dogshit for heating when the outside air drops below 45F. They struggle, they wheeze, they reverse(defrost) they blast continuously, but they don't get hot and they definitely don't heat the house well. For heat they require the engagement of supplemental resistance heat strips.
For heating purposes, natural gas is dramatically superior to heatpumps. This also holds true for gas water heaters, and clothes dryers. Heatpump versions of these appliances may save something, but they suck for generating heat. Absolute dogshit!
If your goal is to save money or "save the planet" get a heat pump based product. If your goal is to generate heat, you cannot beat natural gas.
Ironic factoid: Most electricity generation in my area is via natural gas.
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Too expensive, not good enough. (Score:3)
I hate gas. I hate the idea of gas, I would like to be rid of it. But I don't have the money lying around to squander on heat pumps. Taking on multi-year debt to retrofit my house for a non-existent saving on the bills wouldn't make any sense when not spending that money will result in a much larger saving from not paying debt interest. And I suspect just like solar, heat pumps will be a detriment to selling your house and not an investment. There's a lot of things in life that are good but the general population believes otherwise and heat pumps may have been in that category at one point. But the rising cost of energy has seen fit to close that gap entirely and now you'd be worse off until some of these mythical cheap renewables actually start bringing down the bills. No, I won't risk what little financial wellbeing I have for the "good" feeling of helping meet a carbon target, and I won't gamble on it paying for itself down the line. In my experience these things rarely do. A few years down the line a new thing will come along that will promise all the things the last one would do, except for real this time. And the only winners are the people who chose not to play.
I'm tired of listening to evangelists for green solutions that didn't pay retail, got subsidies that aren't available to me, scadged installation from their work, charged the expenses to their employer or simply have so much bloody money they don't mind the increased expense, it's just buried in the black budget of their expendable cash and disposable lump sums that came from sources I could never dream of. But that's youtube and the greater internet. "This thing I got from a sponsor is amazing! Please pay no attention to the video from 2 years ago from the other company that no longer exists and I can now be honest about all the problems I had and wouldn't admit to at the time. But THIS one, THIS is the boy!" (For now.)
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None of us individually should have to shell out 'extra' for these solutions. It's a societal problem and we need to deal with it as such.
We will all pay for the problems being caused by fossil fuel use, via taxes used to cover the damage from increased severe weather and further down the line, serious sea level rise.
If we were being smart, we'd be doing things like Italy did, paying people 115% of the cost to install them.
But we most definitely aren't being smart.
We need a gradual switch-over plan (Score:2)
Next season, you install another mini-split or two, and go from there?
Sure, it will probably not be as super efficient as a perfect 'heat pump' installation or whatever, but that could be off-s
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My take is that, at least in the US, mini splits are thought of like having window units. Which people think makes things look 'cheap'.
You do pose an interesting concept though.
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Read my post above.
You have to pay certified engineers to install any air-con system that they advertise unless you understand and seek out a specific alternative.
Your choices are:
- a niche self-installable system using propane that you have to install and maintain yourself because trades won't use them.
- a large, expensive system installed and maintained by a certified engineer with only a partial grant and other restrictions.
- paying a certified engineer to do the whole thing at your own expense.
T
Heatpumps. (Score:2)
Gas boilers in the UK are soon to be banned.
An unqualified person working a gas boiler or gas piping is illegal in the UK and has been for decades. It's called Gas Safe, formerly Corgi, and it's a very regulated qualification in a very regulated industry for a reason. I get that. You could kill people.
Heatpumps have only one problem - they have a specific requirement to be installed / maintained by an F-Gas certified engineer (not quite the same as the above, far less stringent). Which is really nonsens
Not worth it due to high cost (Score:2)
In the US these systems are a no-brainer. I pay 0.12USD per KW/h vs 0.36USD per kw/h after currency conversion.
At that price, its simply cheaper to heat using other sources.
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Heat pumps sound great til you get a fat electricity bill in summer when you least expect it.
And this is the major flaw in your arguments. People generally do not run a furnace in the summer to heat a home; the furnace cannot cool a home. A heat pump can cool a home and with global temperatures rising, more people are going to need cooling in the summer.
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Boilers and other fossil fuels would be far more expensive if they were required to remove the CO2 they produce. Heat pumps can be powered by CO2 free sources so as plants switch they get greener.
The entire problem we have is emitting CO2...saying CO2 emitting sources are cheap without having to account for their direct contribution to our problem is looney toons.
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I live in the UK. I have heatpumps. I live in an all-electric house.
My electric bill is GBP 30 this month, rising to GBP 40-50 in the winter.
Previously it was GBP 120-150 per month in the winter.
Heatpumps save a LOT of money and are so low power - I can run them off battery, no problem at all (200W to sustain 20C in an 0C external temperature).
Being in an all-electric house has actually MADE solar and heatpumps profitable for me. My solar runs through the blackouts (I live rurally, so I've been "off" for